Crushed Daisies
by Ellen Jacee
Summary: Basil Hallward buries the thing that meant most to him. Musings on "Picture of Dorian Gray."


**Crushed Daisies**

Preface:

Basil Hallward is the artist –Basil Hallward is one who defines inspiration and beauty. He finds the perfect picture of boyish innocence, and with one slip of the tongue, his inspiration is lost. Beauty, purity, and perfection within the infinite unalterable scope of imperfection is corrupted, transformed into a new and detestable experiment at the hands of the charming, yet realist, Lord Henry Wotton.

Dorian had been one idealistic portraiture of a dreamer's reverie, and with a few chance words, he too was warped beyond anything a dreamer could seek to rectify.

Basil Hallward, the artist – the dreamer – muses over this irreversible shift as he buries one of the first depictions he'd ever painted of Dorian, wishing he'd never met with true beauty so that, in its absence, he could continue to live on, life insubstantially changed.

**Pastiche:**

Basil Hallward could feel the weight of the paint-slathered canvas and the dirt-caked shovel pulling him down into a sort of half slump. They weren't even very heavy; it was what they meant in his world that yanked on his soul, and gave his heart the curious sinking feeling that he couldn't seem to shake.

He had known Lord Henry Wotton, he thought, quite well. He had known that Lord Henry Wotton would steal away the one bit of pure and intact idealism that this world had left, and use it in an experiment. And so he, Basil, had attempted to conceal Dorian, wishing only that the world should see one last bit of hope, before it was thrust into the reality of this rank and decaying age.

And then, he'd said "Dorian Gray" and all of that hope, all of that artistic core that made Basil paint the world as seen by him, shuddered and fell to pieces. A dreamer, one of the last, was falling apart.

That was what people like Lord Henry Wotton did: they picked apart all that there was of romanticism and fanaticism, and then they departed, leaving reality and all of its harsh doctrines behind, for other burdened souls to deal with. It was due to those like Lord Henry – those of carefully cultivated, destructive wit and charm – that dreamers were of a dying race. Dreams could only be defeated by the intangibility of other dreams, or lack thereof; Lord Henry certainly had a lack.

Shifting the shovel onto his left shoulder, Basil watched the slight breeze pick up the particles of dust that fell from the great clod of dirt that clung to the iron shell of the decrepit tool. It whisked them away in its would-be mellow, zephyr-like manner, Basil gazing after, lost in his barren and empty land of thought.

He shook his head as if to clear it of reflection, and scrutinized the garden before him. Orchids, roses, irises… it was truly a beautiful garden. The delicate orchids survived in the shade of the less ephemeral rhododendrons. Nearby, the roses grew upon a wooden lattice. They'd become unruly ever since Dorian had stopped coming by to prune them; the roses had been his special charge, and he'd been their little prince, caring for them as he might a beloved friend. Basil himself had planted the irises around the edge of the modest stone pathway that served as the only guide through the untamed mass of beautiful and thriving life.

Placed tastefully and asymmetrically was a small fishpond, with picturesque gold and silver scaled fish, flitting through the dappled sunlight as if they were birds on the wind. A lovely and unobtrusive spring bubbled into this, providing a lovely example of what exactly natural beauty was and should be. Larkspurs had taken root around the edge of the water, their wispy roots trailing majestically into the pool, as if trying to trap one of the metallic-scaled creatures.

And still, it would not have been a true English garden had there not been the occasional sprinkling of daisies and buttercups here and there amidst the sophisticated and pretentious blossoms of more complex specimens. Basil loved the daisies and the buttercups, and how they'd simply grown up amongst everything else, as if knowing full well that they, too, deserved a place in such a handsome garden.

Just a few days ago, Basil had been walking through his personal garden of Eden when he'd found an assortment of daisies and buttercups uprooted. He recalled as he stared out at his hiding place that he hadn't yet reminded James not to pull them, and added that to his mental to do list. But Basil could put off the moment no longer – sighing, he placed the canvas on the ground before him, trying not to look at its mocking glory.

He stepped onto the first stepping-stone carefully and deliberately, and followed the path until he could go no further. It was so difficult – what in this unspoiled place could he callously uproot? What component of utopia could he remove that would change it little?

The painting was a part of a utopia that was gone. It struck Basil as ironic that he was trying to save a bit of his old sanctuary – the sanctuary that Dorian had been such a phenomenal part of – and preserve it in a transient asylum, that was still more everlasting than his previous one.

Then again, it wasn't Dorian that Basil had loved so dearly, as much as he wished it had been. It had been Dorian's innocence, Dorian's illusionment, which the dreamer in Basil had so adored. Maybe Dorian had been right – maybe Basil hadn't cared about him in the right way at all. Maybe Basil, in his own personal style, had wanted to use Dorian as an experiment as well.

Surveying the scene around him, Basil chose a location at random. It wouldn't matter what he had to dig up to bury the painting – it had been stupid to think that he could go on living as he had before he'd met Dorian, with a bunch of unresponsive plants as a key source of artistic inspiration. It was as if a whole new palette of color had been temporarily visible to his naked eye, and now, Basil could only trust that those colors once existed, unable to reproduce them on canvas or in his own mind, yet bored of that which he saw every day.

Exhausted by his own experience and his own life, depressed and oppressed by that which he had known was possible and didn't know anymore, Basil knocked the dirt off the shovel and began to dig, barely registering the fact that he was uprooting the daisies and buttercups he'd so fondly deliberated a moment before. Every shovelful of dark, nutrient-filled dirt he brought up seemed heavier than the last, and Basil was sweating heavily by the time the hole was deep enough to house the painting.

Leaning on the shovel, Basil stared down into the gash in the fabric of his garden. It was fitting – a wound much like the one Dorian's transformation had had on Basil's own soul.

Basil took the painting and carefully lowered it into the brown abyss, chiding himself for his heed. Why should he bother taking mind now, when the painting was simply going to be destroyed by earthworms and time? Yet still, even in the last seconds before he let go of the edge of the canvas, he was vigilant.

Rubbing his fingers together, Basil lifted his hand to his face and smelled the paint he'd used in the creation of one of his only true works of art. A small crystalline tear fell from his eye onto the creation, and Basil took the shovel, covering the portrait with dirt, and sweat, and a tear or two.

It was even more strenuous to bury the thing.

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**A/N: This is an IB project I did for my English class for the book "Picture of Dorian Gray." Hope you like it. If not, whatever; I wrote it for school so it's not like I wrote it for all of you. (Don't take that the wrong way please!)**


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